Monday, September 20, 2004

Arn Anderson Day

First, a new link you all need to check out. Daily. First thing. The William World News will greet you every morning with links to all the DC baseball stories you need to see. And Penn State football, if that's your thing. Check out the Senators logo!

My faith in the news media continues to dwindle. I know I shouldn't expect the Baltimore Sun to run the kind of rah-rah yay DC pap you get from, say, here, but I expect at least something more than rank dipshittery. It's like USA Today without the pretty graphs. From Peter Schmuck:

There is a chance Major League Baseball's relocation committee will make its long-awaited recommendation to commissioner Bud Selig on the next permanent home of the Montreal Expos, and it doesn't look like the team will be landing in the District.

Baseball chief operating officer Bob DuPuy said last week the troublesome outcome of the D.C. City Council primary would not necessarily affect Washington's offer to build a publicly financed stadium, but no one in baseball's central office really knows for sure.

That means baseball will either have to delay the decision (which wouldn't be a major shock to me, of course) or opt for the safest deal, which is in Northern Virginia.

It has already been demonstrated here and elsewhere that the results of the Council primary are probably not as damaging as first reported. That's okay, though; nobody seems interested in reporting anything but "Marion Barry's sticking it to the Man." The real problem is that last paragraph (what is it with sports writers and one-sentence paragraphs?). Somebody explain to me how Northern Virginia is "the safest deal." Here's a stadium "effort" that flat-out lied about the land it owned and its local government support. The governor of Virginia has abandoned them, and they're desperately trying to make it sound like they can still pay for this. Where the hell does Schmuck get off saying that these 50 acres in the middle of nowhere are "the safest deal"? This guy is like the Hal Bodley of sportswriters.

The Sun isn't the only paper I'm mad at. My last post, as you may recall, concerned a fascinating conversation Jack Evans had with a couple newbie city councilmen on WTOP. Evans neatly pointed out the flaws in the new guys' objections to his financing plan and made a strong, well-reasoned case for it. How does the Washington Times cover it?

Jack Evans, the D.C. Council's outspoken finance chairman, lashed out yesterday at Major League Baseball, which has delayed a relocation decision on the Montreal Expos for nearly three years.

That was the least important part of the whole thing and has no bearing on what happens to the Expos, which the article itself admits. Eric Fisher deserves credit for his coverage of this endless story, but here he seems a bit too interested in portraying Jack the Ripper as a bile-spewing loose cannon rather than as an savvy and effective civil servant.

And the Post? The only people over there who care about this are a Metro columnist and a semi-retired sportswriter. Let us all take a moment to give thanks for the glorious internet, without which we would know nothing.

1 comment:

As Bodley states, there's a conflict of interest in 29 of the Expos' competitors financing them. What interest do the Angels have in keeping Montreal strong? The team has lost Cabrera, Vlad Guerrero, Bartolo Colon and Javier Vazquez to competitors- so that now they lack the appeal they once had to the Latin American fans in San Juan. They wouldn't draw well if they played there in '05, and that stadium is not major league size to begin with. D.C., Canada, or the Caribbean. Hmmm?

Not that I'm saying Selig will do the right thing (after all, he is an owner, and Jack Evans knows this). I'm just echoing Bodley's sentiment that MLB is delayng the obvious.